Colleen LaRose

Colleen "Jihad Jane" LaRose (5 June 1963-) was an American jihadist who attempted to recruit Americans for al-Qaeda and assassinate Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, who drew a cartoon of Muhammad. In 2011, she was arrested for her planned crime.

Biography
Colleen LaRose was born on 5 June 1963 in Detroit, Michigan, in the United States. She suffered from hunger in her childhood, her father raped her from age 7 to 13, and she ran away to become a prostitute. At the age of 16, she married a 32-year-old man, but after a miscarriage, she was unable to have children. She then moved to Texas, and in 1988 she married a 24-year-old, remaining married until 1998. In 2004, she moved to Philadelphia with a new partner, and in 2005 she attempted suicide by drinking 10 muscle relaxer pills with alcohol after the deaths of her father and brother.

While she was in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, she gained an interest in Islam from a Muslim man that she picked up in a bar. She converted via instant messager after learning the basics from a Turkish imam, and signed up at a Muslim dating site. In 2008 she created a Youtube account called "JihadJane" after posting videos that were opposed to "Zionists" and that she wanted to martyr herself for Islam. She then made a plan to kill cartoonist Lars Vilks from Sweden, who made a cartoon of Muhammad that some saw as offensive to Islam. Stealing her boyfriend Kurt Gorman' passport, she left for Europe in 2009 after the FBI interviewed her, fearing that they knew too much about her. She was fully accepted as a Muslim by European extremists, but family illness back at home and the disorganization of her plan led her to return to the US. She was arrested in Philadelphia on 16 October 2009, and she was sentenced to ten years in prison for her crimes.